


A Thousand Days

by cirque



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: 1986-91, Canonical Character Death, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, Hallucinations, Mad Scientists, Psychosis, Tiny baby Sherry, Withdrawal, oops child neglect, pretty much entirely headcanon and I don't even care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This week, she's clean, but it's only Wednesday and she can barely see straight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Days

**Author's Note:**

> Sudden withdrawal from amphetamine use can result in the onset of psychotic symptoms in previously vulnerable patients, as well as mania and other mood disorders. Symptoms usually disappear upon resumption of the previous amphetamine dose. I have zero experience with withdrawal, but I do know about psychosis so I get points for that.
> 
> Of course, I'm running with the idea that the Birkins were shooting up, but at this point it's actually canon for me.
> 
> I'm not saying you should listen to 'Not An Addict' while reading this, but you should totally listen to 'Not An Addict' while reading this. I had it on repeat while writing, so yeah ([link to youtube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHAzwpX7aDE))
> 
> Also, I have no idea how long it would actually take to drive to the moon. I've never tried.

Annette doesn't realize that she's talking to Professor Gray until he sits down at her kitchen table and complains about the lack of refreshments.

"You ass," she tells him, and he doesn't blink. She's always been forward with him, and she thinks he used to admire that in her. "You're the one making me late to work, and you have the nerve to complain that I don't make you coffee?"

"Beer would be good."

She shoots him a look and opens the fridge. It is eighty per cent petri dishes and twenty per cent baby formula. Zero per cent refreshments. "No beer," she says, unsurprised, and turns to face him. "Will you leave now?"

"I won't deny I'm a little appalled at your hosting skills, my dear."

She rolls her eyes, and feels her eyelids stick together. She can't remember the last time she had a decent night's sleep. She closes them briefly and leans back a little. When she opens her eyes he is still sitting at her table, drumming his fingernails on the crappy tablecloth that once belonged to William's mother.

"You're dead," she says, and Professor Gray tips his head with a frown. "You're long dead, actually. Five years now."

"And yet I look better than you."

She ignores this. It's not as if the whole dead-undead thing is entirely new to her, but she's never experienced subjects maintaining this degree of life before. Professor Gray looks healthy, cheery, a little worn around the edges but otherwise recognizably the same college tutor she'd always known. He's certainly no Lisa Trevor.

"You're not infected," she says, concentrating on what she does know rather than what she doesn't.

He says nothing, typically.

She pads through to the bathroom in her soft slippers. Their house is entirely one level, and the lack of stairs to climb is a relief for their crawling infant if not for the two of them falling into bed at sporadic hours. Annette feels her limbs drag even at a slow pace, like she's wading through water.

She runs the faucet just to hear the sound. It sounds like a waterfall and she feels her throat close involuntarily. She hadn't even realized how thirsty she was, but suddenly she's cupping water and gulping it down like a parched desert nomad. She stares into the mirror, unblinking, at her eyes, the tell-tale rictus pupils of withdrawal.

It's been less than two days since she injected. She's breastfeeding, when she can, but mostly she finds it's easier to prop a bottle on the baby's pillow and leave her to it. Lately there has been an increasing pull inside her body to be close to this child, this strange little being with her eyes and William's nose, and breastfeeding seems like a sufficiently normal thing.

Motherhood and drug use are not an advisable mix, she knows that, and she's been vacillating back and forth between one and the other for months now. This week, she's clean, but it's only Wednesday and she can barely see straight.

Gray knocks on the door.

"Give me a fucking minute," she snaps, but he pulls the door open.

"Worst host ever," he pronounces, stepping in the room to balance on the edge of the bathtub. She ignores him, and he fiddles with the small collection of cosmetics, her eyeliner left on the side of the tub, the weird pink bubble baths she hasn't ever opened, and probably never will. She bathes for necessity these days, not luxury, because it takes time, and time is money. Time is relative, William tells her. Time is relatively fucking short, is always her response.

She ignores Gray, and continues staring into her own eyes. They have been bloodshot for so long she's half-expecting herself to mutate.

"Wouldn't that be a hoot?" Says Gray. She didn't like him much when he was alive, and five years in the ground hasn't done much to rectify that.

"Shut up," says Annette, "I might be able to accept the fact that you're here, but there's no way I'll believe you can read my mind."

"All evidence to the contrary," he says, in his condescending professor-addressing-a-student voice, and she rolls her eyes.

She's pretty sure that hallucinations are an annoying new development, but she's always been one for experimentation.

 

* * *

 

She doesn't see him for two days, and when he visits again she is in her nightdress in the kitchen, Sherry's fitful cries rocketing around the small room as Annette paces back and forth, trying and failing to lull the baby into quietness. William is asleep. He'd sleep through a house fire, she's sure.

"Mommy is getting annoyed," she says, in a sing-song voice, and Sherry considers this for a moment before cracking the wailing up a notch. "Mommy is pissed off."

She waves a bottle in front of the baby's mouth, but fat hands push it away. Sherry is teething, and in pain, and is not in the mood to be quiet and go to sleep. Annette's pretty fired up herself, she's almost certain she could run a marathon and complete every single unfinished lab report on William's desk and still stay up all night with her hands all over her husband, hot breath in his ear, hair in her mouth, and they wouldn't even need to catch their breath because even now she feels the drugs pumping through her veins like a magi-cure.

It's been about an hour since she shot up. The needle still lies on the kitchen table beside Sherry's pacifier that the kid spat out in favor of screaming her lungs out.

"I'm disappointed in you." Gray's voice is mocking and a little too loud, and he leans in beside her and licks a line from her earlobe to her collarbone. He hasn't done that in a while; she didn't like it then and she's not sure she likes it now. "You were clean for four days, what gives?"

"You were always going on at me to make the right choices, sir," she tells him, recoiling at the contact, "So this is me, making a choice." She thinks it's somewhat strange that the same guy who admonished her for hesitating over declaring a major is the same guy glaring at her for screwing up her life ten years later. Especially considering his death.

Gray says nothing, but sits himself on the kitchen counter beside her, his face unreadable. Sherry silenced when Annette started speaking, but takes a few seconds to draw breath before resuming the wailing, and Annette resumes her pacing, back and forth, back and forth.

 

* * *

 

The next time she quits cold turkey she holds out for eight days. She's bed ridden with fever and she swears to god she can actually feel her brain shivering in her skull. It feels like the world has been pulled out from under her, and she grips onto the sides of the bed to stop herself falling off.

William and Gray sit either side of her on the bed. She's given up trying to convince William that Gray is actually there; she chalks it up to the fact that he's overworked, but she thinks it's more likely because William is something of a closed book when it comes to belief; he wants hard science and control tests and integers – he can't wrap his head around what he calls 'mysticism crap'.

Still, she's the one lying in bed between her husband and her dead college professor.

"Try to sleep," says William, and kisses her hair. She smells like vomit and sweat and she hasn't showered in almost a week, but she thinks he'd love her no matter what.

"We're sinking," she says, and he makes a hushing sound and strokes her stomach soothingly, and she wants to tell him that this isn't a joke, but she doesn't know which words are the right ones. They're floating, she thinks, the two of them – wading through water looking for dry land, and this bed is their lifeboat, their hook and their line, keeping them upright.

Beneath her, the ground swells. She feels her head roll off the pillow, and she keeps falling, keeps sinking, and she wonders if this is what drowning feels like.

 

* * *

 

When she wakes up William is gone, and she startles for a minute, but she hears him somewhere in the house, humming to Sherry. Sherry giggles, a daddy's girl even at nine months old, and her piercing laugh carries through the veins of the house as though she were right beside Annette on the bed.

Instead, Gray is beside her, weaving his long fingers through her hair. If she closes her eyes she can pretend she's at college again, and he's talking her down on the sofa in his office, after a studious session of extra-curricular sex. He used to kiss her until her lips went red, back when she thought she was completely hard-core for sleeping with her professor and smoking weed. He used to stroke her hair then, too. He'd liked it when her face was flushed from kissing, said it made her blond hair look flaxen, like an angel.

Gray is Mediterranean to the core, all dark hair and olive skin and frowny-eyebrows. _Was_. Shit.

She rolls over towards him on the bed. He sits beside her, knees drawn up, and she rests her forehead against his thigh. He's cool and the change in temperature does wonders for her headache, and she wonders if he's this cold because he's dead. She should do some tests. Maybe tomorrow.

"I'm not going to the lab today sir," she says. Her arms feel like lead and her stomach feels like lava. She still feels like she's sinking, but can't bring herself to care.

He doesn't say anything. If he were a hallucination he'd either kiss her or tell her to get her sorry ass into the lab pronto, both of which would be preferable to the sad little frown he's giving her.

William comes in the room, an armful of Sherry and a face full of smiles. He deposits the baby on Annette's stomach and her world tips upside down as he sits beside her, the extra weight throwing her balance off completely. She wants to remind him they're sinking, but he doesn't give a damn.

"Hey," he grins, and she doesn't know how he dare be so cheerful about the fact that the world is falling apart. Sherry pulls at the black bead bracelets around Annette's thin wrists, the elastic snapping back against her skin. Everything is intensified, the pain, the nausea, Sherry's body against her stomach, Gray's hands in her hair, the strange buzzing sound in the back of her head that reminds her how much work is sitting unfinished in her office. She feels achingly alive and yet all she wants to do is never get up.

"You still feel like you're falling?" William is concerned, and presses cool hands to her sweaty neck, feeling her pulse, shining that damn penlight into her eyes. She blinks.

"No," she manages, and her voice is like sandpaper ripping her throat. "I'm not falling. The whole damn planet is splitting up and I'm the only one that can see it." The bed sways, and Annette sways, but William is frustratingly calm and still. Sherry lets out a shriek and kicks her stomach.

"You're so skinny," he says, trailing a hand up and down her ribs. Her collarbone juts out at a horrible angle and she sees exactly what he sees, her bones too big for her skin.

"Yes doctor," she says, tired. He doesn't even have a medical degree, just a catalogue of undergrads and a PhD in megalomania. He used to like her thin, when they were still new to each other. She remembers when they first got together, a million years ago.

"We're not dating," he used to say, "We're collaborating." He had a word for everything.

"Honey," William says in the here and now, and she rolls her eyes at the petname. He knows she hates it but her sickness appears to bring out the saccharine in him. "Hon, do you understand why this is happening?"

"Because we're on a ball of rock hurtling around a burning ball of hydrogen and any minute now gravity is going to snap and we'll hurtle into oblivion." He frowns, and she tries to laugh at his quizzical face, but it comes out as a cough.

"Well," he's still calm, and that's grating on her nerves, "There's that. But I'm pretty sure this is withdrawal hon."

That makes sense. She's been on and off the drugs like a yo-yo. She looks to Gray to see what he thinks, but his face is impassive. He is absolutely still, like someone put him on pause.

She turns back to William to see that he has pulled out a syringe, and he takes her hand in his.

"No don't," she pulls away quickly, and Sherry tumbles off her stomach onto the bed with a yelp. She sits upright and pats Annette like it's a really fun game.

"Honey, you're killing yourself like this."

She pushes her face into the pillow to avoid meeting his eyes. He's concerned, she's sure of that – in fact, he's positively terrified, and she can't stomach his guilt trip when she's lasted eight days without pumping anything into her body. Eight days is a record.

"I'm doing it for Sherry," she says, her voice thick with tears.

William laughs. "Killing yourself? That's a great parenting technique right there."

She wants to tell him to shut up, but she knows it's useless; he's the sort of guy who never shuts up, even when she's got her mouth pressed against his so neither of them can breathe, even when she's long since fallen asleep beside him. Thinking out loud, he calls it.

"Look, honey, just hear me out. Take this – just take it – and we'll do this properly, we'll cut your dose slowly."

He voice sounds so real, and it's the only thing in the room that isn't echoing around her head, and she wants to believe him, really wants it.

"One last hit?" Her voice sounds like it's coming from the bottom of the ocean.

"One last hit."

He's got it in her vein before she's even done nodding her consent. He always was the best needle stick in town.

 

* * *

 

They don't cut her dose. They don't wean her off. She wakes up and shoots up and pulls her lab coat down to cover her arms and at work they are Dr. and Dr. Birkin, professional to the end, focused and energetic and just the right side of crazy. Their fellow scientists envy them, of this she is certain.

Annette collects trackmarks like rosettes, tiny little red pinpricks that look like mehndi if she closes one eye. She's proud of these marks, these little trophies of war that only she and William know about. They allow her to make leaps and bounds, and she swears sometimes she doesn't even need a microscope to examine viral strains. She works days and nights and days, all back-to-back, her body running on empty but somehow, unfailingly, still running.

She feels on fire, like she could rule the world with one eye closed. Lately she's begun to understand that there is an energy inside her, flowing out of her fingertips, like electronic leaps between synapses. It helps her work faster, longer, better. She can't believe she'd ever tried to give it up. It feels as natural as breathing, the two of them side-by-side, heads in the clouds, playing god.

Sherry tries to walk, and falls back on her diapered butt. Annette stands her up again, and she falls right back down. She rolls on the floor and looks up at her mother with barely-contained confusion, and Annette touches her chubby face.

"You have to learn to walk before you can fly, kiddo."

She often finds herself lying in the front yard with William in the middle of the night, stripped down to their underwear because their bodies are on fire, passing a cigarette between them.

William raises a lazy hand to point at the moon. Tonight is their first night off in a long while and she's surprised to find that they don't have anything to talk about anymore. If it wasn't for the work or the drugs or their sorry attempts at raising a child, she's pretty sure they'd both just silently go from bed to the lab and back again.

"How long would it take to drive to the moon?"

Annette wants to make some smart comment about how maybe they're both higher than the moon right now but he actually sounds serious so she gives it a little thought. Physics was a long time ago, and she hadn't exactly been fascinated by the wonders of space, not when there was so much on Earth to learn.

"A thousand days, perhaps." It's a silly answer for a silly question, but William laughs and rolls over, pressing a quick kiss on the side of her mouth.

"Good girl. You have an answer for everything." He howls up at the moon like a drunk kid, and Annette laughs right along with him.

 

* * *

 

Sherry is almost two when she tries to quit again. She does it slowly, by halves, and William is patient and presumably understanding, though he doesn't cut his own dose. It bothers her, but he explains over and over that the drugs are the only thing keeping him afloat, he's so close to a breakthrough, he needs all the help he can get.

"I don't know what your fucking problem is." She folds her arms and glares at him, but he pushes her aside and raises his finger.

"Language, Annie." His voice is mocking and his arms are overflowing with notepads and binders, and he suddenly looks so pitiful, so pale and green and _stoned._

"I'm doing this for us," she says, sweeping her arm around the room so that his attention is drawn to their toddler playing with Lego bricks on the floor. "For Sherry."

"You're throwing a life's work down the drain is what you're doing."

She gasps at that. " _She_ is my life's work." She wants to be angry, she wants to feel that buzz of adrenaline that she's been missing since she cut the drugs, but the fight leaves her as quick as a puff of smoke. She doesn't want to have this fight, not now, because, despite her best efforts, she's pretty certain he's the only one she loves.

It's maddening, she thinks, the newfound clarity with which she sees everything – now that the drugs are gone, her brain goes slower, calmer, takes everything in and lets her process like an everyday average person. It's mundane, and absolutely beautiful, because she's never really appreciated how nice it is to be able to sit and play with her daughter, to enjoy food, to go more than a day without vomiting.

"I don't care about your damn research, William." It's a lie, but she's always been good at sounding convincing.

"Evidently," is all he can manage before he disappears from the kitchen, from the house.

"One of us has to grow up eventually!" She yells as loud as she can but he's probably long gone.

She doesn't see him for four days. She cleans the whole house in his absence. She actually takes a bath in her pink bath foam, bubbles up to the top of the tub, and breathes it in. She cooks for the sake of cooking. Sherry says two new words and even forms a sentence. Annette stays up at night, waiting for him, admiring the healthy skin that now covers her forearms; they are clear and smooth, no longer the warzone they used to be. She could even wear short-sleeves, if she wanted.

When William comes back she isn't angry. She's barely worried anymore, she just assumed he spent the time catching up on work and, sure enough, when he returns he is carrying a whole new bunch of notepads.

She goes to help him in, and finds herself eye to eye with someone. Or rather, eye to smirking jawline, and she tips her head up slightly to meet his eyes.

"Hello Annette."

"Wesker?" She says, and looks at William, who is all but ignoring her. He and Wesker push past her into the house, headed for the kitchen. It is six in the evening and she and Sherry have just finished their supper; there are a few cookies left on the plate and William grabs at them with a groan. She wonders if he's even bothered to eat while he's been away.

"What's going on?"

William looks at Wesker, and pulls the cookie from his mouth. "Marcus is dead." He seems to think that suffices as an explanation because he turns his back on her and roots through the cabinet, pulling out a pack of potato chips.

"Dead?"

William says nothing so Wesker turns to her and gives her a half-smile. "Most unfortunate."

Annette tries to remain impassive but she's probably failing miserably. William is back on his feet, digging through the cabinet again, and she swears she can hear his stomach growl.

"You look half starved!" She tries not to sound like a whiny Stepford wife, but Wesker's mouth twitches all the same.

"There's not exactly Michelin-starred catering available at the lab, _dear,_ " he enunciates the last syllable scathingly, and knows full well she's embarrassing him in front Wesker. Her first impression of Wesker was that he barely blinked. He used to remind her of a lizard. Now he's kind of a statue, sort of always there but never actually _there._

"I'm going to the bathroom," says William by way of a farewell, and is out of the room before she can even ask him to stay.

Wesker shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and his leather jacket creaks.

"Is this going to be a problem?" She says to break the silence. Wesker makes her nervous. Wesker makes her damn uncomfortable.

"What?"

"Marcus's death."

"I don't see why it has to be a problem. It is what it is – an _accident_. We see a lot of accidents in our line of work. This one just happens to mutually benefit the three of us." He draws the last words out and does his strange grimace-smile that she's always thought made him look a little ridiculous, but he gets his point across.

"Sure." An accident, of course. She wonders if Spencer knows. She thinks maybe it was Spencer's idea, but William is high as a kite right now and buzzing from adrenaline and she's certain it will be a while before he can calmly tell her exactly what happened. Wesker is, as ever, a font of information. "I guess I should congratulate you on the promotion?"

He nods at her. "There's a good girl."

She sits at the table and waits for William to come back.

 

* * *

 

A thousand days later, they could have driven to the moon. Instead they are in bed and arguing, which is never her favorite mix, and they are trying to keep their voices down for Sherry. Sherry is four and has a habit of waking up every night to curl into bed with Annette. William insists that four is too old to sleep in her parents' bed, but Annette doesn't know how to tell him that waking up with Sherry in her arms is the greatest thing ever.

She sighs. "Does it matter what I think?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" William's voice is hushed but he still manages to pour just the right amount of attitude in it to make her flinch.

"If I said 'no', if I said I wasn't going – would you still go?"

She watches his face for an answer, but she can't read him.

"You'd never be able to stay uninvolved…" He says this carefully, thinking out loud once again. "Think about it Annette, G is the future. There's no way you can expect me to believe you don't want to be a part of that."

"You've got me there." He really fucking had her.

"I'm right, aren't I? You want this just as much as I do. I don't know if I'm imagining it, but it seems like you've been out of touch ever since you stopped the drugs."

"I can't explain it William. Everything feels real again. Sherry feels real. I've missed that."

"I know." He turns to face her on the bed. "But I've missed you. I want you back."

"I haven't been anywhere."

"Exactly." He looks smug and taps her forehead firmly, and she knows what he means. She's been rooted to the ground like a tree these past few years, so safe and content and _normal._ She's been working and raising a child and generally keeping her life stitched together, and she's been making a pretty good job of it considering her husband is a murdering crackpot.

But she feels it too, in the pit of her stomach – she misses that weightless feeling of euphoria. She misses William, most of all.

Minutes later, when she feels the sting of the needle entering her vein for the first time in too long, she thinks back to Gray, and the shame on his face the first time she'd relapsed. Hallucination or not, he had a point – this time, she's managed over two years of lucidity. Two years. That had to count for something.

But William's hands are running over her beneath the bedcovers and she realizes that two years can't possibly match up to a life's work. He kisses her like he used to, and she feels like she used to, all fire and energy, and her mind runs a thousand miles a minute again.

He laughs, a great big laugh that seems too big for his skinny body, and tries to bury it in the pillow. Annette laughs too because she isn't falling anymore she's flying, and she feels sick and godly both at the same time, and she's missed this, she really has.

They wake Sherry with their laughter, and she calls out 'mama?', but this time, Annette doesn't hear her.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write this fic because while I totally believe that my beloved Birkins were high pretty much constantly, I can't see how they'd manage to look after a baby in that state. So, it made sense to me that at least one of them was relatively ~clean~ for the first few years of Sherry's life. I think they loved her, in their own strange way, but they also loved their life's work and poor bb Sherry pales in comparison to their precious research. 
> 
> The first part, in which Annette experiences bad withdrawal, takes place in 1987, Sherry is about 9 months old.  
> The middle part, in which Annette is clean, takes place in 1988.  
> The final part, in which they move to Raccoon City to focus on G, takes place in 1991, as per canon.


End file.
